For the one or two of you following along in real time, this post is a full week late, sorry. I mention so as not to confuse about the dates. Marky Ramone’s Holiday Blitzkrieg was a week ago Friday last Friday, not last Friday.
Timing issues aside, Marky and the band did not disappoint. More than thirty numbers delivered in rapid fire with absolutely zero banter in between. Big thanks to Kenny for scoring the tickets for this event.
In other musical news, the new Jamulus server setup I mentioned last week passed its first live test with flying colors. With the whole band on, everyone sounded great and there was minimal noise. In fact, I don’t think it has ever performed as well as it did in the last jam session. We’ll have to get a few more sessions in before declaring victory, but this is very promising.
This week’s random photo comes from the wall of the men’s in an unnamed, Brooklyn bar. Regular readers will undoubtedly know the place. Glad to see that they used union printers for these stickers.
The holidays are now officially upon us. Just for fun, I’m going to keep a running count of how many times I hear All I Want for Christmas is You between now and the 25th—I think I’ll hear it at least 10 times. I broke a long-standing, personal tradition of buying nothing on Black Friday. The rationalization was that I saved hundreds of dollars on something that was truly needed (just not at this moment). While this made financial sense, dismounting my high horse is painful.
Given the long weekend, I hoped to make some progress on a couple projects. That didn’t happen, and not just because I was spending time spending money. Now, there is something to be said for rest and relaxation, but I feel like I squandered some time when I could have been establishing forward momentum.
I did manage to “fix” one thing that has been on my list though. Over the past few weeks, one or two of our jams were plagued with really poor audio quality—the musicianship was, of course, stellar. I’m not sure if it was the server configuration, or network congestion. Since I can’t do much about the latter, I updated my Jamulus server docker image with the hope that it might improve things. Rather than building from source, I’m now using a precompiled distribution. In theory, that really shouldn’t make a any difference. But, I wondered if I might be doing something wrong, especially with the dependencies. The initial test sounded great. The real test, however, comes when we all connect to jam. Wish us luck.
Links
David Lerner, a Mr. Fix-it of Apple Computers, Dies at 72 If you were a Mac user in NYC in the 90s and aughts, you may have found yourself at Tekserve on West 23rd more than once. Lerner co-founded the business in 1987 and over the next 29 years, it became a New York institution. I was especially fond of their take a number system that repurposed a few old, classic Macintosh computers. RIP David.
…the Hardest Driving Test in the World. The Knowledge, sounds brutal. I’ve read that it’s so much information to absorb, that it actually changes people’s brain structure.
I’m a Concert Pianist. This Is Why I Seek Imperfection. “This fetishization of perfection might not be surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. You cannot learn or grow while trying to appear as if you have everything figured out. You cannot talk to God by trying to avoid doing something wrong. Perfection is stagnation.”
My Low Effort Sourdough Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe has been updated with with two techniques that have greatly improved the quality and consistency of these loaves recently: 1) Final proof in the fridge overnight and 2) Bake in a preheated, covered dutch oven. Still not pro quality, but a tasty bread nonetheless.
I hoped to make some progress on the jukebox project this week. However, an initially productive vibe configuration session led me to a dead end as can happen with vibe configuring and vibe coding. Actually, dead ends aren’t uncommon with old fashioned configuration and coding. Perhaps the LLM makes one encounter the brick wall faster. That’s progress, right?
All was not lost though. I learned a couple things in the process and rethought what I was working towards initially. Now, I’m moving forward with a slightly different plan. I’ll post a progress report when I have a little more to show for the effort.
Antibalas at Brooklyn Bowl 2025-11-15. Credit: Kenny Rennard
Caught Antibalas at Brooklyn Bowl on Saturday night—phenomenal show. They were super tight and had great energy for the whole set. There were several alumni present as well, at one point, there were no less than fifteen guys on stage. Thanks to Kenny for trekking out to Williamsburg on a rainy night, not to mention providing this excellent picture.
Speaking of Williamsburg, it’s been a minute since I’ve been in that area around Brooklyn Bowl. What’s with all the massive, brightly lit billboards for Cartier, Sapphire Reserve cards and other high-end brands? Is it just me, or do they make Wythe Ave. feel more Sunset Strip than Williamsburg?
This week’s random photo comes from an apartment house on 8th Avenue in Park Slope. I’ve seen many variations of “yo, don’t let your dog soil our building’s entrance”, but this one is just so, um, polite?
In an effort to make more things, I started working on a jukebox project I’ve been contemplating for a while. Normally, these sorts of projects only get documented when they are complete, with this one, there will be more posts along the way. You’re welcome.
By the way, the government has been shut down for over a month at this point—with no end in sight. If the administration follows through on their threat of withholding pay from furloughed workers—and those that continue to show up despite not getting paid—can we all expect a tax credit come April? I’m thinking not…
Letters from an American – 7NOV “Trump said there was no need to worry about future Democratic control because by getting rid of the filibuster, Republicans could pass legislation that would guarantee they would “never lose the midterms and we will never lose a general election” again.” – Isn’t this what his handlers have been shooting for all along?
